Secret Recipe
by Corpse In Bright Clothing
Summary: The brothers heed the words of a dream wizard. 'What - you don't wanna go on an epic quest?" Reese asked, and then stepped through the door into the garage.


There once was a wizard who didn't exist; oh, well, there are plenty, but only one is relevant. Naturally, he did the magical thing and he showed up where he wanted: smack-dab in the middle of the Wilkerson boys' bedroom. He appeared in a shower of sparks and kept a warm, bright and mystical glow from his long, white beard to his long, blue coattails.

In amiable, industrious tones the wizard spoke: "You must retrieve the ... Now, what was it called again? ... I don't even remember what color it was. ... 'Kay, how about you retrieve my memory for me, and _then_ you can begin your epic quest!"

And of course he exited in a manner equal to his entrance in surprise, mystery, and flash.

After being seemingly paralyzed for hours the boys were lifted from their spell-like state. ... They looked blinkingly at each other.

"What does memory look like?"

"It doesn't look like anything, Reese."

"If we don't know what it looks like, then how are we supposed to find it?"

"I don't know, Reese. Maybe we aren't."

"But we have to! The magical, bearded guy said so!"

"Reese! If we don't know how to find something, we can't find it. That's it!"

"I don't believe you. _You're_ just not _trying_ hard enough." Reese accentuated his opinion with a two-handed shove to Malcolm's chest.

"Keep your hands off me!"

Reese continued to shove, slap, and otherwise keep physical contact between Malcolm with his hands. Malcolm grunted and groaned in protest.

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" came encouragement from Dewey as he bounced on his bed with his newest, already-ragged toy flailing from his right hand.

They heard a loud groan out of her from the hallway, and before Lois had even appeared in the doorway Malcolm had turned to face it and shouted, "Tell Reese to stop touching me!"

"He started it!"

"Did not!"

"Fight! Fight? ... Fight. ..."

Lois sighed and lowered her shoulders, her tongue playing along the outside of her teeth. She suddenly decided: "Hug."

"What!"

"No way!"

"I said hug."

"But -"

"He -"

Forced by their mother's hands, Reese and Malcolm hugged. Lois even wrapped their arms around each other for them. The boys whined and whimpered as quietly as they could so as to avoid future torture. Lois observed them during the moments the hug lasted, then finally said enough and returned to her other business.

Reese and Malcolm faced away from each other; each shuddered, and Malcolm's tongue stuck out the left side of his mouth. Dewey returned to talking to his bunny-bear-walrus - no one could remember what it was.

"My brother's are boring; they haven't killed each other yet. I wish they would die. No I don't. Then they couldn't pay attention to me; I like it when they pay attention to me. No I don't. They're jerks; I hope they die! ... No I don't."

"_Shut up_, Dewey!" came the chorus of hollering from the brothers in question.

Dewey paused, and the silence lasted mere seconds.

"I told you. ... My brothers are dumb. I know about what they're looking for; the white witch told me; it's in the garage; they just weren't listening."

"That's -"

"_Boys! Get breakfast!_"

They all froze, then raced.

Waffles were all gone, and there was no cereal any would eat. Reese tried for nachos but was told no. Dewey carefully watched his brothers scavenge and opted to sit at the table and wait.

"I don't know what I'll have this time. I just realized I'm hungry, and I'm not sure what I want, but I did bite a opossum once." He studied what he held with suddenly increased interest. "Are you a opossum?"

"Dewey, stop talking to that thing at the table."

Dewey held it closer. He jittered slightly as he gazed left and right over the table. He whispered, "It's okay; I promise I'll never throw yo -"

"Dewey!"

"O_kay_," Dewey called to his mother; he gazed over the table a few moments more, stuff his friend into the front of his shirt, and went to look for waffles.

"So are we really going to look in the garage?" Malcolm asked as he and Reese sat at the table.

"Dude. It was Dewey that said that. So it's prob'ly not true. But of course we're gonna look in the garage." Reese ventured a look at Lois - currently preoccupied - before going back to Malcolm. "Moron."

"You're the one who's a _mor_on, searching for the memory of a gay wizard!"

"He's not gay, and it's _not_ stupid. I totally don't know where he came from, but I'm sure he's a great wizard and smarter than _you_!"

"Whatever, Reese."

Quieting, Reese and Malcolm could hear Dewey whispering as he poured himself a glass of milk.

"Malcolm was all like, 'I wanna hug you, Reese!' and Reese was all like, 'Dude, I'm getting hugged.'"

"What!"

"That's so not what happened!"

"... 'I wanna hug you forever, Reese.'

"'Me, too, Malcolm, but I'm too dumb to figure out how to hug myself.'

"'I think I'm pretty good at it, Reese.'"

"Stop it, Dewey!"

"Yeah! _Shut _up!"

"... 'I love you, Reese.'"

After a pregnant pause, Reese said, "That's it; I'm going to the garage," and shoved his chair under the table; Malcolm rolled his eyes and followed Reese in abandoning breakfast; Dewey watched wide-eyed as they left, let the cookie in his mouth fall to the floor, and ran after his brothers.

"This is stupid," Malcolm decided, "I'm not going in there."

"What - you don't wanna go on an epic quest?" Reese asked, and then stepped through the door into the garage. "Oh, is this it? No. This? _This_? No. Where is it? Oh! This! _Has_ to be it!"

Malcolm heard bang after loud, clamorous bang until Reese emerged holding a manila file with a sticker that read: 'SECRET RECIPES'

"What - that's the wizard's memory?"

"There's a secret recipe for nachos! I know it!"

"That makes no sense, Reese."

"It so makes sense! See -" Reese opened the file, then started screaming. "I'm blind!"

Malcolm frowned. "That makes even less sense. Let me see that."

"_No-o_! No! _Don't_ look!" Reese inched backwards, trying to keep what he'd just witnessed from Malcolm, and he tripped over nothing; Dewey, who had been hovering behind Reese, put his arms out to catch his brother and fell with him. Then, when Reese thought things couldn't worse, an outburst from Hal came out of nowhere.

"_What _- is - going on? When will you boys stop _fighting_!"

"It was an accident, dad," came a dull voice, and, "We weren't!" came a pleading one!

"I - don't - wanna hear it. Now, you boys go to your room before you get into any more _trouble_."

That's how the brothers came to be stuck in their room with a whole day full of we-have-no-idea-what-to-do.

"You could _hug_?" Dewey suggested. This was completely ignored. Then, Dewey seemed to become excited by the idea. "Hug! Hug!" Again, he gained no response. It was then he began shouting, chanting the word, repeatedly, relentlessly.

"Dewey - no - stop - please!"

Dewey was not backing down.

It was Reese and Malcolm who gave in, and hugged.

"Yay! ..." Dewey then drew his covers over himself; said, "My brothers are dumb;" shared meaningful looks and nods with his handful of oozing stuffing; suddenly stuffed said stuffing under his bed; ignored the four eyes he knew were glaring at him as he closed his own, at peace.

For the moment, Malcolm felt awkward to be alone with Reese, and although he didn't have the best view of his brother Dewey then either, going to sleep in their shared bed seemed better than the alternative.

Faced with a day alone in his room with his brothers asleep, Reese opted out of wakefulness as well.

Before sleep came for him, Malcolm turned to Dewey and whispered, "What was in the file?" There was no stirring - nothing. "Dewey. Tell me."

Malcolm waited with bated breath, wondering of the file's contents; if Dewey would tell him; if Dewey had already fallen asleep.

"Nothing," was his eventual response.

Malcolm turned to face away from Dewey, only to discover that this time that had him facing Reese. He faced the ceiling. That wasn't good for him either, and he turned again to bury his face in his pillow.

There once was a wizard who - oh, yeah, right.

There twice was a magical, white-haired man who chose to appear to the Wilkerson brothers in their bedroom.

"You have done well. You will find your prize in the form of a bowl. ... Also, I remember it's sort of a lavender color. ..."

Reese almost leaped out of bed in his excitement. "Did you hear that?"

"What? ..." Malcolm asked as he sat up. The promise of sarcasm and assumption hung over his essentially rhetorical question, but Malcolm opted to give Reese a chance to answer it.

"We ... 'revived'? The wizard's memory!"

"Retrieved, Reese. And it was _clearly_ a dream! Or, two consecutive dreams we had about the same guy, together - which doesn't mean anything! ..."

Reese, bewildered, spluttered, until he managed to say, "Whatever. Let's go look."

The logical place to look for a bowl was in the kitchen, and that's where they went. Reese and Malcolm were rifling the cupboards when Dewey walked out, muttering tiredly and incoherently to his toy, and opened the fridge.

"Pudding," he noted, and Reese instinctively pounced.

"... If mom made it, why were you so excited, anyways?"

"It's because pudding mix is easy, Dewey," Malcolm explained, sitting on the edge of the bathtub and scrubbing the final remnants from Dewey's scalp, "It's impossible mom could have messed it up by doing anything short of poisoning it on purpose."

"Which she might have done," Reese added.

Malcolm stood to grab a towel. After pulling it, something clattered to and rolled on the ground.

"Pick that up, Reese - here you go, Dewey."

"Whoa! Dude!" Gaining responses dull and none, Reese added, "Look!"

What had fallen was a small bowl for holding bar soap or something of the like - lavender in color - and stuck to the bottom was folded paper. Reese unstuck it and proceeded to point a finger in Malcolm's face and laugh.

"Hah! A recipe for nachos. I was so right; _ye-es_! This is awesome."

"_What?_ You're lying! Let me see that."

Reese was only smug in obliging; Malcolm disbelieving, in blinking.

"Wow. Wait while I calculate how much time we wasted on this."

"Aw, come on, Malcolm. Stop com_plai_ning. Life is awesome. _And_ we have a _recipe for nachos_!"

"You ... Whatever."

Reese rolled his eyes back at Malcolm, and then they were suddenly looking at each other. They hugged mutually for more than five seconds, pulled away to stare blankly at each other for a few moments, and finally returned to their separate beds.

It was then Dewey walked, towel wrapped around his middle, to pick up his best friend. He considered what was now simply a tattered bundle, lifted the toiled lid, said, "Goodbye, Darryl. I'll miss you," and flushed. ... The toilet clogged.

* * *

**Author's Notes: 1. This ... well, slashy non-slash, or hinted slash. Not the main point but focused on enough. View it the way you want. 2. Semi-colon count: 21? Ellipse count: 18? 3. Just because I think it's very funny, I'll tell that initially I wanted to write intentionally crappy ficcage, and this is the result; yeah, I changed my mind about that about eight times before seriously starting to write, and essentially changed everything. I fail at crap, huh? 4. Much love!**


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